


ocean blue what have i done to you

by maranhig



Category: Walking Dead RPF
Genre: Angst, Body Shots, Infidelity, M/M, slight dubcon? only slight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-31
Updated: 2014-02-16
Packaged: 2018-01-08 03:07:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1127632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maranhig/pseuds/maranhig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>norman has always wanted andy, yet knows better than to play homewrecker. but at laurie’s going-away party andy gets more smashed than usual. and norman’s only human, okay, when andrew lincoln undoes his shirt and demands you to take a body shot off him, you have no choice.</p><p>the shitstorm that follows makes him wonder if it's worth it, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. rain in the doorway

**Author's Note:**

> ahhhhh my domain of dark, dank hopelessness. i did miss you. *pets lovingly*  
> title by two door cinema club. heartache provided by these two idiots.  
> once again, this is in the daryl/rick tag just to signal boost it. once again, just say the word and i’ll take the tag out. yeahbye.

“Why the hell aren’t you dressed, you slacker?” He’s in your trailer again as he’s wont to do, blazer still open and hip propped against the doorframe as he crosses his arms to glare at you properly.

You don’t bother to look away from where you’re lacing your Chucks, though you smile down at the worn soles you’ve had patched time and again. “At least I’ve already got my pants on, dude, just chill.”

He rolls his eyes and starts teasing you in an eerily accurate version of your California stoner boy twang, and you just flip the bird at him, tune him out as you shrug into your shirt, buttoning it swiftly and adjusting the cuffs. “Miller Union, right?” you ask, cutting through his little monologue, and he scoffs as if you’ve affronted his grandmother.

“Oi, this is Laurie we’re talking about, of course she deserves a good place for a sendoff, now come on! Before Steve leaves us behind.”

You fling your cap at him and he only barely catches it to hurl it back at you, laughs when it pegs you in the chest and you’re not sure if the twinge of pain you feel is from the impact of any physical blow.

~

You’ve always liked to think you have an eye for beauty. Slim or shapely, dark or white, red mane or brown curls, guy or girl. It’s almost a rite of passage, being queer in Hollywood, and honestly, it’s okay.

Falling for your costar the second you met him, though, that was completely out of left field.

It doesn’t help that he has full red cocksucking lips that quirk up in the cutest ways, quick eggshell-blue eyes, clavicles like cicada wings, hair you love best when he rolls out in the morning barely awake and it’s as messy as unraveled string.

And he has a _gorgeous_ voice. With his Georgia accent he can melt all the underwear in his ten yard radius, sure, but his quicker English cadence, once you get used to it, seeps into you until you want to wrap it around you like a toasty quilt.

Your voice has always been flat, unremarkable, which is why you use your hands when you talk, try and express yourself through charcoal pencils and DSLR flashes and Daryl’s gravelly lilt until you’ve made sure people know it’s you, won’t ever mistake you for someone else.

Andy can never be mistaken for anyone other than who he is.

Yeah, okay, so you may have a thing for your costar. Your very married, very straight costar with kids who talk your ear off every time they visit the set. You may hug at every possible occasion, and jest about how in love the two of you are, but you’re just displaying the bromance that the public and the paps always clamor to get. And you’re not even sure if he’s still comfortable with it anymore. Once while he was being interviewed on the carpet you made to sneak a little kiss on his cheek. Instead of squeezing your neck in acknowledgment or grinning at you, however, he tilted his head away and you ended up with a mouthful of hair. The lance of betrayal you felt then was as irrational as it was excruciating.

It’s an impossible situation that’s never made sense, and you were supposed to have gotten over this schoolboy crush _years_ ago, you’ve had plenty of time to recover.

But right now, with his limbs slack in his seat and his glittering laughs and warm snaking fingers, you check the wound on your heart and aren’t all that surprised to see the stitches unraveled and the blood dripping fresh with each look Andrew Lincoln sends your way.

~

“He’s had enough already, I think,” Scott sighs, and you let loose a plume of smoke from your mouth in similar exasperation. Andy’s decided to stop trying to pickpocket your phone and has listed over to hapless Steven, andy hey you know you can use your own cell to surf the net right. Danai and Laurie don’t bother masking their amusement, and Lauren reaches across the dining table to smack Andy’s wayward hands from Steven’s jacket.

“Quit feeling him up, that’s my job!” she scolds him, and Andy pouts, cants forward until he has his cheek on the tabletop and Melissa has to pull away the half-empty spaghetti plate part from where it’s touching his hair.

You glance wearily at Scott again, and he smiles. “Shall I get him back safe, or will you?” It’s comforting yet strange, how tightly-knit enough you become that you start acting as if you’re truly family, like how Hershel and Daryl hold Rick up when he can’t hold himself, much less the rest of you together.

You’re feeling particularly maudlin tonight. Maybe it’s the three beers or the nicotine or the departure of yet another cast mate, or it’s just how everything perfect in Andy seems brought down to earth, the stark lines in him distorted, smooth enough to touch when drunk.

And you’re _so_ not going there, except you already have: how pliant he’d be under your hands, how he’d shudder at the touch of your lips to his slick neck, the warm way he’d look at you and smile and paw at your face. You forcefully stub your cigarette out on the ashtray, try not to get too affected by how wide Andy’s eyes are when you haul him up.

“I’ll just get the lightweight out of the way, it’d be a drag on your party, babe,” you tell Laurie, because all this is in her honor after all, and she shakes her head in dismay.

“Oh, come on, it’ll be a drag if you don’t stay longer, it’s barely even nine!”

“Tell that to him: not even eating yet and he puts down a whole Heineken and then some, it’s his fault.”

After more failed attempts at getting you to stay, the gang finally relents and David even tosses you the keys to his sedan so you won’t have to take a taxi, warning you get it back to Senoia in one piece. There’s a little more banter (“What, you think I’m letting _Andy_ drive your crock a shit?”) and hugs all around before you finally corral Andy in the backseat, join those few souls that depart the metro on a Friday night.

Against the blaze of oncoming headlights and your best friend murmuring to himself _the sun is up the sky is blue it’s beautiful and so are you_ , you’re helpless in stopping this love-not-love from steadily shredding you inside out.

~

You have a rule about getting too drunk in front of Andy. Basically: do not get too drunk in front of Andy.

It’s a fundamental commandment for many good reasons, most of which have to do with not leaving yourself open to doing anything you’ll regret later. You always get clingy and mush-mouthed and kiss random strangers without warning. Whenever you try to drop a one-liner it just gets you stares as if you’re speaking Aramaic. And though you’ve never thrown up while utterly sunk, not even once, you’re not keen on changing that.

But then, of course, there was Andrew Lincoln. This mess you’ve become can be explained with those simple words, you think. You can fuck your way through a whole cheerleading squad, and maybe the quarterbacks too, because you drift, you don’t settle, but then there was Andrew Lincoln. You’ve gotten over the infantile notion of love since Helena left you, but then there was Andrew Lincoln. You’re not, but then there was Andrew Lincoln.

It’s self-explanatory.

“We should do shots. Like, body shots. Off each other’s _bodies_. It’ll be fun!”

Though Andy may have been docile on the drive back, he’s anything but now. You tighten the arm around his waist and fumble with the trailer door with your free hand. His face is tucked into the crook of your neck, the short gusts of air over your skin whenever he speaks making you shiver worse than the night breeze.

“Is there even any alcohol in this child-proofed rust bucket?” You finally step in from the cold and flick on the lights after tediously groping the wall, deposit him on the seat at his little kitchen table.

“Come on, think of it as bonding time! We haven’t done that since Jon left and that was fun.” His words run together like wet newspaper, muffled from where he’s speaking into his arms and he sounds like a little boy. “An’ now Laurie’s leaving so we should do it again. C’mon, please?”

It _was_ fun. Only fragments of that wild night remain with you, since Jon made sure to pour every kind of liquor known to man down all your throats. Steven kept flopping like a starfish on the floor, shirt half-undone from where you licked salt off his shoulder and he was laughing so hard you were scared he was really crying. And Andy was in turns morose and overtly affectionate and you actually had a hand on his knee at one point but Jon managed to divert travesty by crashing into a table like a redwood, shaking all upon impact. But he and Steven aren’t here with you now.

Ignoring his constant stream of _come on come on come onnnnn_ s, you put on a fresh pot of coffee, get mugs from their shelves on autopilot. It occurs to you, then, that you know every inch of his trailer as much as he knows about yours, and that’s just another cosmic screw-up the world’s presented you, how in each other’s pockets the two of you are and yet this’ll never be anything more than what it is.

You dig the heel of your hand into your eye socket hard until you feel bone grind against bone. God fucking damn it, it’s too late to be thinking these darkachewant thoughts. Or too early. Andy’s suggestion is growing more and more enticing with each second that you stay here.

You can’t stay here.

Of course, that’s when Andy chooses to ask, “You okay, Norman?”, and whatever rejoinder you had in mind dies as you look over your shoulder and glimpse his wide eyes, the perfect line of his throat, the rosy flush on his genuinely worried face and restraint crashes inside you like a cabinet full of delftware.

“Fine. Now where the fuck’s that tequila you promised.”

You try not to think too much about his slow smile, unreservedly delighted and a little too mischievous, tugging at your already worn heartstrings.

~

There are only lemons instead of limes, you don’t have any shot glasses and Andy won’t stop snickering at the saltshaker you’re brandishing, but things actually seem to be off to a good, not at all foolhardy start. You’ve already settled in the chair next to him when you remember that you’re going to have to put your mouth on him at some point and you nearly chicken out, for everyone’s sakes.

But then Andy curves his fingers around your wrist, so careful and almost too hot to bear. “Me first,” he says happily, tugging your long sleeve up to above the elbow and pulling your arm close and. _Oh_. Bends down and drags his tongue across the tender flesh on the inside of your forearm.

Your breath hitches and you clutch at where he’s still holding your wrist, but force your hand to fall when he pulls away. He taps out salt on the damp patch he’s made, and gulps from the bottle, his face winced manfully as he goes to lick your arm again. You nearly bite through your cheek trying not to react as badly as you do.

“Mmhmm.” He smacks his lips all exaggerated-like, a giggle escaping him and your muddled brain only lets you feebly smile back. “Your turn.”

You nod quickly, just wanting to indulge him enough and have all this over with. “Do the lime thing.” You lick some salt off the side of your hand and toss back a shot, Andy shoving a lemon wedge into your mouth before you can properly curse at the burn. You suck hard, cheeks hollowed and eyes watering. His fingertips are against your tongue, everything getting mixed up now and you’re sucking on his fingers, his eyes gone an unnamable color.

Panic seizes you up and you yank his hand free, spit out the desiccated pit and feel bits of pulp still stuck to your teeth. He touches his hand to your chest and your traitorous heart surges to meet it, eager and starved and you have to _leave._

“No’man,” he hiccups, a fist in your shirt as he lurches forward, plants his clumsy mouth on your clenched-shut lips. “Kiss me?”

You feel like every muscle in you has gone on lockdown, and your nails are digging hard into you from where you’re clasping your thighs. You refuse to look at him, turning the other way so his mouth skids across your jaw and it’s him getting shunted now, how fitting. “ _No_. You’re drunk.”

He buries his face in your neck with an odd humming sound, almost a moan. “Only way I’ll be stupid brave enough t’do this.” He stands up abruptly and starts unbuttoning his shirt, mulish determination in its intensity, his eyes never leaving yours.

“What the fuck are you doing,” you say, voice little more than breath and you loathe it.

He hikes himself onto the tabletop, lies flat on his back once he’s done wrestling with the shirt, a soft exhale gusting out of him and skittering down your spine. “One for the road?” he asks, and he’s sucking his lower lip between his teeth, knuckles going white from where he’s gripping the sides of the table in anticipation and this is wrong so wrong.

But when you don’t move an inch, he lets his head thunk back against the wood, shielding his face from you with his hands and his defeated sigh shattering the last of your self-control. You’ll both regret this, you know, but Laurie’s leaving the show and tonight doesn’t count, you can do anything, everything.

You lean over him, cup his hips in your hands to balance yourself. He starts at the contact, looks up at you through his fingers with eyes sunlight-in-glass bright. “No’man?” he asks, his hope so palpable and colonizing your every thought now. You grin hysterically and lave at the dead center of his abs, the muscles jumping under your tongue as he gasps. You scatter the salt and take a larger swig from the bottle than you meant to, flaying your throat open. You dive back down and lick hard, yanking him up by his lower back so he’s arched underneath your mouth.

He twists his fingers in your hair, harsh breaths rattling out of him and you’re just sucking at bare skin now, you’re gonna leave a mark. The thought makes you perversely happy, and so does his distressed cry when you stop.

“Please,” he sobs, and the pure need in his voice and on his face is destroying you, as is how he’s grinding against your thigh in jerky, desperate motions. “ _Please_.”

“Yeah.” You take hold of the back of his neck and kiss him, his wrecked mouth full of your name. “Yeah, okay.”

~

Andy keeps his arms wrapped around you like a limpet, tongue restless on the place where your jaw meets your throat and he laughs when you stumble from half-dragging, half-carrying him to his bed. “Settle the fuck down, God,” you rasp out, pinning him to the wall and relishing the drag of your bodies together, the coiled heat in your belly spreading like acid all throughout you. “Or I’ll end up just fucking you against the trailer and that won’t be discrete.”

You can feel his cock twitch even through the confines of your jeans, and he’s scrabbling at your belt, mumbling, “fuck me fuck mefuckme, yeah, norman, please.”

Well. Shit. The thought is sobering, and all but terrifies you. You were all but expecting him to go and fuck you through the floor, which would be okay, more than okay but — jesus. He’s wasted as hell and you’re not exactly the most composed person right now either, so many things aren’t going as planned.

Then his hands are shifting to cup your face, thumbs rubbing at your cheekbones as he says, a little too seriously, “Hey. I trust you.”

 _i don’t trust **me**_ , you want to scream, but his lips burn soft on your neck, fingers slipping under your shirt, tracing a path from your navel to your ribs.

Fuck it. You’ve thrown yourself off this cliff; might as well make the most of it on your way down.

You topple at the foot of the bed with him straddling you, in a tangle of arms and legs and he finds it the funniest thing in the world, laughing and laughing as you help him slide his pants and boxers down. You’d be pretty amused too, except you’re too busy going dry-mouthed at the sight of his pale, sinewy legs, the smooth hair on his thighs, the sweet curve of his erection you so badly want to taste.

“Clothes,” he groans, all but trying to rip off your shirt. “Too many.”

“Get on the bed, you’re not helping,” you tell him, chuckling when he scrambles to it in a flash and plants himself there face first, socks and unbuttoned shirt still on but otherwise naked enough. You tug your shirt off so fast the tips of your ears burn, unzip yourself to give your aching dick some relief and clamber atop him, suckling on the shell of his ear.

He whines low, unsubtly grinding into the mattress and you can’t have any of that. You slide your arm under his chest to tug him to his hands and knees. He doesn’t object, docile as a lamb and he really did mean it when he said he trusted you, and it makes something jam in your chest when you think about it too much. You kiss the nape of his neck, ruck up his shirt with the heel of your hand. Your tongue shapes to his pretty angel bones, the bumps in his spine, your hand smoothing up and down his side as he shudders and moans.

By the time you reach the swell of his ass you decide you can’t have him looking this pristine. You scrape your teeth over his tailbone and he lets out this shocked whimper that has you palming your crotch to get yourself under control. “This okay?” you manage to ask.

“Norman, _fuck_ , don’t fucking tease,” he grits out as you swirl your tongue over the bruising area on his skin.

“Patience, grasshopper,” you chide him, giddy in your exploration and discovery. You set your mouth over one plump ass cheek, bite down hard and he lets out a mangled scream. Blindly you feel for the lube and condoms in your jeans pocket, grow bright red when you realize how opportunistic you seem, but it’s not like Andy cares at the moment. He practically sighs in relief at the press of your slicked-up finger inside him, though he isn’t relaxing enough. That problem goes away once you start sucking fiercely on another spot on his ass.

You get lost in the task, and once your own discomforting arousal makes itself known again there are reddening marks strewn all over his skin, the wet sound of your fingers inside him and his ragged gasps so loud in the room.

“I’m good, I’m good,” he pleads, hips twisting against your iron grip. “I’m good, Norman, c’mon.”

“And here I was trying to be nice,” you pant, rolling on the condom and drizzling more than enough lube on yourself. You pause and once again take in how Andy’s laid up before you, how his limbs are trembling from the exertion of keeping himself stable. You touch his back carefully, slow stroke down his vertebrae that makes him writhe.

“On your back, babe. Wanna see you.”

He rolls over without hesitation, and you’re glad he doesn’t react to the pet name you dropped, or you’re disappointed, you can’t tell the two apart. You give him a long overdue kiss, his tongue curled against the roof of your mouth and you could drown like this, never take another breath.

You try to take it slow. The second you get just the head of your cock inside him, though, he bucks up hard, and your eyes all but roll back in your skull from the tightwethotamazing clamp of his ass all around you. But he’s moaning from pain, not pleasure, tears slipping down his cheeks and you curse yourself, curve your arms around him and pillow them under his neck.

“Breathe, Andy,” you soothe him, and he nods, twists his head away as if trying to hide from you.

“Fuck, that was a bad idea.”

“Yeah. We, we should stop if you can’t –”

“No, just. Give me a second.” He struggles to take in deep, even breaths, and you jerk him off slow and careful until his hips roll up into each stroke, sufficiently distracted. All the same, you don’t do anything more until he whines your name, says jesus christ and fuck me already you lazy bastard and so many other curses that somehow sound more obscene coming from his ravaged mouth.

It stuns you, deep down, that you somehow make it last, that you can take in the scrape of his cock against your belly, his helpless moans, how the blacks of his pupils have almost completely edged out the blue. How he can’t stop kissing you and raking his nails down your back, leaving marks of his own. This impossible softness in his gaze that makes you dizzier than the alcohol coursing through your veins. How he moves when you move, keeping time.

This right here right now, and you want to lock him in place with your whole being and never let this end, but you have to, and it does.

He stays curled against you even after it’s done, his come and sweat drying on your skin as he falls asleep instantly and you want to cry.

~

You wake up somewhere after dawn. Your eyes are still mostly stapled shut, but you’re aware of how you’re hanging precariously off the side of the bed, the dead dog taste on your tongue, the headache yawing inside your frontal lobe like a tidal wave. You don’t have a shirt on and your jeans are undone, and there’s something important about that, something you should remember.

You feel your way to the bathroom, rinse your mouth out and scrub your face until you feel human again, until your stomach stops flopping around like a beached cephalopod. There’s beard burn around your lips, when you check yourself in the mirror.

Andy’s beard, branding you like steel wool as he whimpered into your kisses, relentless as the drive of your cock deeper inside him.

You have to grab the sink until the roiling nausea in you sinks down.

The cold, broken, disgusted feeling doesn’t go away, though.

He’s still dead to the world, the sheets wrenched out of place and they hide nothing. The shades have been left pulled open and there’s sunlight streaming through the window, pooling over him and it makes him look like he’s made of gold.

A sob rises in your throat and you force yourself to find your shoes and shirt, walk away to see the bottle of tequila and the saltshaker and the lemons still left on the kitchen table, both culprits and witnesses to this horrible thing you’ve done. You think you’re dying, for a moment, but you make it to your trailer without incident and you’re still alive, nothing to do but keep going.

You look back, but only once.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to see the little kiss norman gets spurned from, go here: http://pistengyawa.tumblr.com/post/69070510317


	2. it always rains on the unloved

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> while reading i really recommend you listen to "goodnight moon" by go radio and "end of me" by a day to remember, for maximum crying effect.  
> chapter title by neil gaiman. and on we go.

You never get over it. He never gets over it. There’s no such thing as a recovered drug addict. Here you are three months later and your hands still tremble, you need to keep your distance and wear your sunglasses at every comic-con, just to mask how your eyes dart to him every few seconds with a terrible magnetized need. He’s no better, never talking directly at you, always armed with the excuse to never stay in the same room alone with you for more than a second. Always staring at you helplessly when he thinks you won’t notice.

It brings you a modicum of comfort, that he’s as destroyed by this as you are.

You know it’s a stupid way of looking at it. It’s stupid and petty and childish in its simplicity, because this is anything but. You fucking took advantage of your best friend while he was drunk, of course you deserve hellfire and brimstone raining down on you. You waited for it, in your trailer, sleeping your hangover off well into midday, fitful and staring up at the ceiling half-expecting it to snap and crumble like your life just had. You waited for the call from your lawyer, norman why the fuck is andy suing you he wants you off the set what did you do.

But instead Steven barged in, yelling, “You lazy motherfucker, we’ve got a show to wrap up – Norman? Hey, you okay?” His eyes were wide as he sat at your bedside, one hand resting on your arm, firm and comforting and you nearly lost it then. You just shook his concerned pokes off and got yourself into a fraught semblance of calm.

You were on your third cup of coffee and second cigarette, telling Steven to shut up already, your head was killing you, when Andy finally joined you for lunch. His baseball cap was pulled low over his eyes and his shirt was on backwards. He started upon seeing you, mouth twisting up and you braced yourself for cruel words, for him to cut you down and end your career in front of everyone. But instead something broken whisked across his face before he turned away to sit at the opposite end of the table. You noted with bone-deep guilt how he leaned forward so his weight rested on his thighs and not his ass.

You’ve not spoken a word to each other off-camera since. He doesn’t drop by after takes to play your doorman anymore, or fucking look at you, and you miss him. You miss his laugh, his botched attempts at spooning the marshmallows out of your Lucky Charms, his sure presence by your side, the warmth of his friendship, you miss how on some days you were the only one who could get him to smile, his arms slung around you after a good take.

What you _don’t_ miss is what happened that night. You don’t miss the way his lips moved over yours, his cock against your hip, his hands never still over your body, always seeking out new ways to make you react. You don’t miss the way he begged you to stay, staring at you as if the earth would swallow you up and take you away from him. You don’t miss his hand curving around yours. You don’t. You don’t.

You want to cry from frustration and hurt, you want to shriek _stop making this worse_ but you don’t know who you’d be talking to if you did.

The only person who knows the entire story is Sean, good old Sean who’s too far away to run his mouth to Andy. He actually sounded sympathetic across the line once you finally blustered out the whole thing. “Kid, you done fucked up.”

“Thanks for upping my self-esteem by negative-nine million percent, Flanery, you asshole.”

“Hey, you kinda date-raped him, you’re the asshole here.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“Then tell him that, apologize like a man, for God’s sake.”

“I. I don’t think he’s talking to me anymore.”

There was dead silence for a while, your own stuttered breaths and the television blaring from Sean’s end, then his exhale against the receiver. “Fuck, Norman, I’m sorry.”

_i’m sorry too. more than you’ll ever know._

You tossed your phone on your bed and opened a fresh pack of smokes after hanging up, and you wished for illuminated office windows and street traffic rushing below, a motel rooftop to swing your feet off the ledge, anything to block out this smothering quiet that Andy’s left behind.

~

“What’s up with you and Andy?”

“What about?” you ask, sounding regular enough, taking another pull from your mineral water. The panel’s about to start in a few minutes, and your eyes flicker to where he’s talking with Danai and Lauren, an easy smile on his face.

Steven tugs on your sleeve again, like a kid demanding attention. “Look, it’s not just me, we’re all worried, okay, since Laurie’s sendoff things have been weird between the two of you.” This gnawing ache spreads through your core at that, because Steven’s looking out for you, they’re all looking out for you, wanting you back the way you were before. They keep asking you if you're doing alright and you lie, you’ve gotten so good at lying.

“I’m okay,” you say quietly, wondering if you can smile and you do, just shaping your mouth, nothing to it. “We’re okay. Really.”

From the other end of the room you can hear Andy on his cellphone, going, “Love you too, babe, see you in a few days.”

You never thought this would happen to you, but it has, and it sucks.

~

It’s a different time zone in the thousandth nondescript hotel room you’ve crashed in, but you still feel the same, worn down to the marrow and happy as hell. The fans’ passion is infectious, never failing to remind you why this show is the best thing that’s ever happened to you. You’ve just stripped down and bundled the covers up around you when your phone buzzes. You squint at the screen, the sickly glare of it harsh in the darkened room, and you’re vaguely terrified by what you read.

_Can I come over? We need to talk._

You have to swallow your heart past your throat but you manage to text back _okay_.

The knock on your door comes a little too quickly.

You inch it open, regretting that you hadn’t taken a shower, your skin grimy and tight under your meager T-shirt, boxers much too short for the occasion. He’s still in the clothes he wore at the panel, slump-shouldered and beaten around the eyes. He tips a speculative look at you, a tiny smile on his face. “Are you gonna let me in? Or do we just talk like this.”

“I. No, yeah, c’mon.”

He brushes close by you, and you suck in a fast breath almost at the same time he balks from it. He hovers uncertainly in the middle of the room, like he has no idea what he’s doing here even if he’s the one who started all this, the one who pressed his lips to yours and slipped off his shirt, his bared shoulder glowing in the dull light –

No. Stop.

You scrub your hand over your face, wishing you could just sleep. You really don’t know what he expects to accomplish by all this.

“Please, just hear what I have to say before you shut me out again –”

You bark out a laugh, too loud in the stillness of the night and he flinches. “Oh, _I_ ’m shutting you out, of course you had nothing to do with that, not even bothering to let me explain what happened.”

“There was nothing to explain, Norman, what were you supposed to say?” He sounds genuinely curious. “That I fucked up? That I made this mess all because I want you and you have every right to be angry? I know that. I just don’t want to hear it out loud, okay, not now.”

Your eyes meet his with a crack and you have to look away immediately, your throat feeling scoured. “You. I thought you were mad at me. For what I did.” You can’t help the hope that trickles into your voice. “You _want_ me?”

He attempts a smile that looks like he’s got a gun to his head, and what he says next has you spinning. “I don’t remember much of that night. I wish I did. I don’t regret a single thing.” He’s talking fast, anxious, and you can only gape at him and his hands as they flit and stammer in the air. “I love my wife. But I don’t want to give this up. Not now that it’s started. I want this, Norman. But only if you do too. I’m a selfish son of a bitch who doesn’t want to have to choose.”

He’s stone cold sober and so are you, and that fact makes every word uttered here so much worse, that there’s no booze, nothing and no one to blame but yourselves.

You wonder if it’s another bad case of character bleed, the unintentional cruelty in how Rick keeps expecting so much of Daryl, and the compliance in the other man because he thinks it’s needed. And goddamnit, you _do_ need this, you need the few pieces of him you can get in return for all of you, with no care for the consequences, because you’ve wanted him for so long and you’re tired of doing the right thing.

You’re moving before you even realize it, stepping right in front of him so there’s nowhere he can hide. He jerks back on reflex, his hand clenching in your shirt before the tension leaves him and he slides it up, fingers stumbling over your cheekbone. “So we’re good?” he asks, looking at you with something shadowed and longing, and you make a weak noise, touch your forehead to his.

“You’re not fucking with me?”

He grins, his old goofy kid’s grin that you haven’t seen him wear in months and it hits you like a two-by-four. “Would I do that?”

“Dude, you do that in your _sleep_.”

“Norman.” He takes your face in his hands, kisses you so hard he sears your lungs, and you gasp out, “Okay, okay.” There’s too much light behind your eyes, too much color and hope and fear, and a moan tears itself from your throat, and you can’t believe it, it feels like you’ve lost to him, you lost, but is this victory? Is this defeat?

And he’s pulling you to him and to the bed, murmuring, “It’s alright, we’ll figure it out in the morning. Sleep now.” He’s about to leave when you close your hand around his wrist.

“Stay, Andy. Please.”

You’re terrified and happy and you want to think that he’s yours now, he’s sure and perfect and yours, but this is a lie. You just want to believe it for as long as you can.

Judging by how he kicks off his shoes and crawls under the sheets with you, his arms tight around your waist, he wants to believe it too.

~

After the last comic-con you pull over outside Atlanta and call Andy, the empty sky gray enough to hurt if you stare too long. You don’t really know what to expect, certainly not a warm laugh and an invitation to stay for the night, but you don’t dwell on it.

He answers the door holding Arthur, wearing a grin threatening to split his face in two. You give him an awkward aborted hug with the little boy between you, wrapping a sticky hand in your hair and yelling happily.

“He’s the most advanced in his class, he’s probably on for the honor roll,” Andy tells you, as proud as you were of every little thing Mingus did at that age.

“Should I call Harvard,” you ask, and he sets his son down, catches you up in a real hug with his face against your neck, and a quick thrill goes through you, something you’ve never really gotten used to.

He murmurs, lips moving slow and deliberate over your skin, “Gael’s out of town. So there’s nothing but apple crumble and ice cream for dinner.”

Falling sensation in your stomach, a thin thrill of _something’s gonna happen_. “How tragic,” you breathe out, tugging weakly at his curls. “Now let me in, s’fucking freezing.”

There really is nothing but apple crumble and ice cream, not that you or the kids mind. Matilda guilt-trips you into reading Goodnight Moon to her before she goes to bed, Andy watching from the doorway with an expression so tender you almost can’t stand it.

“I’m eighty-five percent sure my daughter has a crush on you,” he says much later, almost conversationally as he presses you down on the guest room wall, your collarbones denting his palms. You make a pathetic keening sound when he pushes under your shorts, just the tips of his fingers touching your cock and he continues, “Just don’t break her heart.”

He’s talking in riddles, or metaphor at least, and something about how he says it bothers you but then he goes to his knees and that’s the least of your worries for the rest of the night.

He kisses you goodbye the morning after, his hand on the back of your neck. “See you next year, Norman.” He’s barefoot and wearing the old Def Leppard shirt he stole from you, his inkblot lashes so dark against his cheeks as he smiles, and it’s so infuriatingly sad because you just know there’s no fairytale ending waiting around the corner for the both of you, not even close.

~

“Look, about what happened earlier, it didn’t mean anything,” Andy tells you, eyes wide in consternation.

You flick open the sleeves of your black button-down as nonchalantly as you can. “I know it didn’t, so knock it off, it’s fine.”

This is the first spat you’ve ever had, most of your time alone together spent in your trailer, necking in front of HBO or watching Charlie chase his tail, punch-drunk on euphoria but always with that undercurrent of fear. You’ve been sprinting up a cliff for so long, just bracing for the moment your foot lands on air. This looks like it’s it.

“No, it’s not fine.” He sits beside you on the bed and touches the hinge of your jaw softly, as if you’re made of the finest china, to get you to look at him. “It was nice that you held my hand like that, Norman, really. But if we’d kept at it for a second longer the journos would chalk things up to more than just bromance. That’s why I pushed you away. I’m sorry.”

You sigh and let your head roll over onto his shoulder, which is a lot uncomfortable, the angle not right for it, but you can rest there for a minute, his thumb rubbing your kneecap, and believe for just that long that everything’s going to stay the same forever.

~

You’re dozing off in front of the TV, Eye in the Dark heavy on your lap, when there’s a knock at your door. He gives you an unimpressed look and drops to the floor, stretching magnificently before padding away. You squint at the neon blue wall clock, and it’s almost ten in the evening, there’s only a handful of people who’d come calling this late.

With a growing sense of foreboding in your belly you get up to see who it is, half-expecting to see kidnappers, a crazed fan, grim-faced officers bearing bad news.

Instead it’s Andy.

You stare at each other for a little too long.

“What’re you doing here,” you hear yourself say roughly. He should be in bed right now, kissing his kids and wife goodnight. Nothing after shooting’s done, nothing away from the confines of your trailer, that’s the unspoken rule you’ve agreed upon. And here he is at your apartment, looking disheveled and helpless and unsteady as he replies, “I just. Wanted to see you.”

“You _saw_ me, we had an interview with Atlanta Mag earlier,” you say, incredulous at best.

He shrugs, something glittering in his eyes that make you feel like you’re still asleep. “Yeah, but I didn’t get to do this.” His hand finds the back of your neck, his mouth fired on the inside when it meets yours and you only now realize how cold you are.

It goes out of control so quickly. You let him press you into the couch and shove your jogging pants out of the way, stars exploding behind your eyelids because God knows the last time you took a breath, you don’t need breathing as long as he keeps licking at your lower lip and moving his hips so sinfully against yours. “I want you to fuck me,” he moans, knees bracing tighter around you in anticipation and you freeze. You haven’t gone that far again, not once in all the time you’ve been doing this; he never brought it up and you never asked. But he’s asking now.

“How about you fuck me,” you rasp out, and his face twists up with desire, eyes so dark and huge as he nods so hard you’re afraid his head might snap off.

You come once from his fingers scissoring relentlessly inside you, and again when he knocks you out of his lap to shove into you so hard and deep you black out for a few seconds. He stays curled against you and you don’t complain, despite how the heat coming off both your bodies combined is suffocating. You lay your hand on his stomach and it flutters and snags, Andy breathing out hard and his hand moving to cover yours.

He’s caged you and molded you into something new, something you’ve spent the past four years trying to recognize in the mirror, but it brings you no satisfaction to know you now do the same to him. You’re corroding his perfection like rust on metal, and you press your face into his chest, listen to the tick of his pulse slow down until you fall asleep.

You wake up to his arm over your shoulders to keep you from falling off the couch, and your phone ringing on the side table, tinny and demanding. You blink a few hundred times and finally reach for it to answer, and it’s Andy’s wife.

She wants to know where her husband is.

Her husband’s muttering and trying to pull you back to him, mouth still a bit swollen from where you bit him. You swallow hard, tell her that you didn’t see him after the interview at Miller Union.

She’s already tried everyone she can think to call. Andy’s phone’s been switched off. He’s missing in action, hidden out here on your couch. Gael’s voice is breaking, right along with your heart and your guilt complex rearing up inside you. You don’t want to _hear_ it.

You promise to keep an eye out, wish her well and hang up, kiss Andy’s shoulder and run your hand through his hair until he looks up at you blearily.

You tell him to go home.

Pull his clothes over him and send him on his way, not bothering to warn him about what awaits. He’s mostly asleep still, yawning into your mouth.

Eye in the Dark comes up to where you’ve slumped against the door, and he rubs himself over your ankles, purring like a lawn mower.

It’s only when he’s gone that you realize you could have guilelessly alibied him, said he’s right here Gael, we came back to have another couple drinks. Tired from being hungover and not from being up half the night fucking you. You could have even given him a beer for breakfast so that he’d taste right when she kissed him. It hadn’t occurred to you, and now you’re to blame. You just wanted to erase him, cover him up with a white sheet and poof, vanish, destroy the evidence. Rediscover his still-breathing body in your closet when you got back from the set.

You stare at the ceiling, drowning by inches and there’s nothing you can do now but wait for the darkness to close in.

~

His call comes a few days later, just as expected.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you, sounding miserable and like he’s by the highway, and you draw up a picture of him, hunched by some overpass or standing in an alley, head bowed low as he tries to make things better. “I shouldn’t have been so reckless, to put you in that situation. I’m sorry.”

He keeps saying _i’m sorry_ , over and over and it’s growing stale on his tongue. “Don’t, Andy. Just don’t.”

He grows quiet. You imagine that you can hear his heartbeat, though of course that’s impossible. “Look, production’s done anyway so.” Your hand clenches uncomfortably tight on your thigh. “We can just put this behind us.”

There’s a low groan from the other end, almost like he’s been shot, but there’s nothing you can do about that now. “ _You_ can put it behind you,” you correct yourself. “I’m just gonna be here. Where nothing’s changed.”

“Norman –”

You cover your eyes, try to speak evenly because if you have to hear him say one more word you might shatter from the weight. “I, really. I knew this would happen anyway, so I didn’t expect much.”

Andy makes the same bad moaning sound, static crackling as he scrapes the phone on his face, and you say as firmly as you can, “Don’t worry about it, it’s okay.”

Silence stretching like thin ice, then his voice, soft and broken:

“I wish things could have been different when we met.”

He hangs up.

You put yourself back together in jigsaw fashion, inhaling deeply and blinking fast to avoid crying. You look out your window to the setting sun and remind yourself over and over that this is nothing, you’ve borne this ache before, it won’t be too long before your life will begin again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to see the aborted pinky finger hold, go here => http://pistengyawa.tumblr.com/post/74051591613  
> charlie the dog! http://bestmoviesevernews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/daryl-dixon-holding-dog-for-norman-reedus-the-walking-dead-images.gif  
> i like this a lot less than i did when i started it. ah well. leave a kudos after the beep. kirkman bless us and keep us during season 4 episode 10 later.


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